Two weeks earlier, a dozen executives met at Google for a product review of the company’s photo-editing software, Picasa. Midway through the meeting, Sergey Brin, the brilliant Russian engineer, flip-flopped into the meeting fresh off the sand volleyball court at the center of the Googleplex. Opening up his laptop, he soon became distracted by something Google engineering head Jeff Huber, a good friend of Brian McClendon’s, had sent him. The Picasa product manager was a few slides into his presentation, but began to notice that others were distracted by what was on Sergey’s screen, too. Eric
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